TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (60 page)

Karen Finch, twenty-five, a single mother, disappeared on the way home after spending the weekend with her young daughter.

Debra Guffie, a twenty-nine-year-old heroin junkie who would have been the next I-5 victim, escaped and pointed the finger at Roger Kibbe.

Darcie Frackenpohl, seventeen, a Seattle high school student turned teenage runaway, disappeared while working as a prostitute in Sacramento.

Roger Reece Kibbe, forty-eight, on the night he was arrested for assaulting Debra Guffie.

Roger Kibbe skydiving, late 1970s.

Roger Kibbe, with daughter, Carolyn, then thirteen, 1976.

“The Crime Kit” Roger Kibbe had with him when he assaulted Debra Guffie contained white cordage, wooden dowels, handcuffs, a vibrator, and scissors.

Pair of scissors fished from the ditch where Stephanie Brown’s body was found. Detectives were puzzled by the cut clothing of the victims.

Homicide detective Steve Kibbe, right, being honored as Officer of the Year for the Douglas County (Nevada) Sheriff’s Office the same week that his brother, Roger, became the prime suspect in the I-5 murders. (Credit:
Record-Courier.
)

Former Chula Vista Police juvenile officer Leo Kelly is still haunted today by what he found in 1954 in a fifteen-year-old boy’s closet.

Roger Kibbe’s childhood home at 545 Casselman, Chula Vista, a placid San Diego suburb six miles north of the United States–Mexico border.

Criminalist Jim Streeter, who first identified the “nonfunctional” cutting of many of the victims’ clothing.

Criminalist Faye Springer, the legendary “trace evidence” expert who broke the case open with her microscopic findings.